by Ralph Gibbs
“Did you bring any cutting tools?” Wendell asked.
“No, we didn’t think we’d need them,” Billy said. Wendell swore.
“We have some dynamite in the truck.”
Franklin almost laughed aloud. If they used dynamite on the door, it would save him from having to kill Wendell.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Wendell asked, almost yelling.
Franklin didn’t wait for an answer. He knew it was only a matter of time before Wendell was free. Desperate, Franklin lay down on the floor and used his feet to kick out the remaining blocks so he could squeeze through. Rope fashioned and tied off, he squirmed his way through the hole and down the rope. With luck, it might be hours before Wendell was out of that cell. By then, he was hoping to be ready for him.
Once his feet hit the ground, Franklin let the idea of freedom wash over him. Since the moment the jury had read the verdict, he thought he would never breathe free again. Franklin made his way to the other inmate housing facility and entered quietly. Just as in his block, the silence was punctured by the occasional scream of pain and fear.
“Is someone there?” a voice in the darkness called out. Franklin didn’t answer. “Come on, I can hear you. Let me out of my cage. Don’t let me die in here.”
“I need you to be quiet,” Franklin said. “I’m trying to find a way to open the cells.” Franklin lied, hoping to keep the man silent.
“I know how,” a Latino man said. This one was further into the cell block.
“How?”
“There’s an emergency bypass switch inside the armory,” the man said. “Works even when the electricity is off.”
Studying the armory door, Franklin found it barred shut and locked with a thick armored padlock. Even with a hacksaw, there was no way to cut through. A blowtorch might work, but he didn’t have one. Anything else would take hours he didn’t have. There was a box with no seams next to the padlock, but it too was locked.
“There’s a problem,” Franklin said.
“I know how to get in the armory as well,” the Latino voice said. “I’ll tell you, but you have to promise to set me free.”
“Me too,” the first voice said.
“How many are still alive here?” Franklin asked as he walked down the block to look at the man he was talking to. He stopped several feet from the cell housing a tall, thin Latino dressed in prison yellow. The man’s cell was filled with dried shit and vomit.
“Near as I can tell, there’s about half a dozen that’s recovered from the plague, but from the screams, I’d say a few more are still riding it out,” the man said. “I’m Ammiel Cordero.” Ammiel held his hand out. When Franklin didn’t move, Ammiel dropped his hand and shrugged as if he understood and didn’t take offense.
“If you can get me into the armory, I’ll set you free,” Franklin said. After he dealt with Wendell, he would either set the man or his spirit free.
Ammiel rested his arms on the bars. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“I don’t see that you have many choices. You either take the chance with me or wait for someone else to come by before you die of starvation.”
“The armory door has two locks,” he said without hesitation. He knew the odds of anyone else coming along were slim. “One is conventional and the other electronic.”
“The electricity is off,” Franklin said.
“Doesn’t matter. The bypass works on battery power. As long as the battery isn’t dead, it should work.”
“Keep going.”
“The conventional lock is the armored padlock. The key for the padlocks is right next to it in that reinforced armored lockbox. That’s the electronic part. To open the lockbox, you have to push a button in the guardhouse.”
“Sounds easy enough.”
Ammiel smiled. “Here’s the rub. To open the electronic lockbox, someone has to be pushing the button. As long as the button is pushed down, the box is unlocked. Stop pushing the button, the box locks.”
“Where’s the button?”
“It’s under the monitor station,” Ammiel said.
Franklin frowned. That shot down the idea of putting something heavy on top of it, which was probably why it was located underneath. “How do you know all this?” Franklin asked.
“I’ve been locked up a long time.”
“What are you in for?”
Ammiel stepped back, spread his arms wide, and cocked his head. “I’m Mexican, man. Drugs and gangs, ese,” he said in a made-up thick Mexican accent.”
Franklin made his way back to the guard shack.
“So, how are you going to get us out of here?” the other inmate asked.
“I’m working on it,” Franklin said.
Franklin grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and bashed his way into the guard shack. He found the button Ammiel described and pushed it. He heard the lockbox open. When he released the button, it locked, just as Ammiel described. Now all he had to do was figure out how to be in two places at the same time.
Finding a small screwdriver, Franklin started to take the button apart.
“I forgot to tell you,” Ammiel said. Franklin froze. “If you short out the buzzer, it’ll default to the locked position and stay that way until the guards override it with their password. Since computers are down, you won’t be entering any passwords.”
Franklin quickly put the button back together. Searching through drawers, he found a toothpick and smiled. When he was younger and more of a hoodlum, he sometimes went around his old neighborhood in the middle of the night ringing people’s doorbells and hiding in the bushes. People didn’t always come to the door. Since there was no fun in that, he figured out that if you pressed the doorbell and then jammed a toothpick into the crevice; the doorbell continued to ring until it was pulled out. If the homeowner was home, they came to the door every time.
He tried the same trick here, but the spring on the buzzer was too strong. It kept popping back out before he could leave the guard shack. He tried it a few times, but with the same result. He threw the toothpick away in frustration and then heard a muffled explosion.
“What the hell was that?” Ammiel asked.
“Trouble.” Franklin guessed they went with the dynamite option after all. By the sound of the explosion, they must have used a small portion of the explosive. Either way, he only had a few minutes while Wendell was recovering. Once he did, it wouldn’t take long for Wendell to figure out where he had gone. Time was not on his side.
Standing back and studying the room, Franklin spotted a couple of thick phone books and had an idea. Stacking the phone books underneath the desk, he placed the fire extinguisher on top. The fire extinguisher handle was about six inches too short. He found a few magazines, a paperback book, and three thin writing tablets, but still came up an inch short. Searching the drawers again, he found a handful of coins. He separated the money by size and taped them together so they wouldn’t slip apart. After stacking them on top of the extinguisher handle, there was a gap of only about a sixteenth of an inch. Franklin growled in frustration and was about to give up when he remembered the toothpick. Searching frantically along the floor, he finally found it nearly underneath a filing cabinet. He eyeballed how much he needed and broke the toothpick down to size. Pushing the button, he placed the toothpick on top of the stack of coins and instead of shoving it into the crack he jammed the toothpick against the center of the coins and the center of the buzzer. It was like trying to balance an egg on its end and building a house of cards at the same time. Slowly removing his hands, he nearly cried out in triumph when the contraption worked. Not wasting time patting himself on the back, Franklin rushed to the lockbox. As he removed the key, the toothpick snapped.
He unlocked the armory, and just as the armory door closed behind him, he heard Wendell scream out, “Where the fuck is he?”
“Who?” Ammiel asked.
“Turnipbitch,” Wendell said.
“Who the hell is Turnipbit
ch?” Ammiel asked.
“Dude, if you ask me one more question, I will blow your fucking head off,” Wendell yelled.
“Okay, man. Be cool,” Ammiel said.
Franklin pulled a shotgun from the rack, loaded it, strapped a pistol and holster around his waist and shoved a few flash grenades into his pocket.
“There’s no one here,” Ammiel said.
As Franklin opened the armory door a crack to peer outside, the door flew open. Franklin jumped aside and leveled his shotgun as one of Wendell’s friends fired his pistol where Franklin stood seconds earlier. Franklin pulled the trigger of the shotgun hitting the man square in the chest and sending him flying against the guard shack ten feet away. The man was dead before he hit the cage.
Wendell ran for the exit as two other men ran toward the armory firing their weapons. Franklin pulled a stun grenade from his pocket and tossed it toward them. The men screamed as the grenade exploded. Franklin didn’t waste a second. Attacking before they could recover, he fired off two shots killing one with a shot to the face but only wounding the other in the shoulder. The kinetic energy from the blast threw the man backward. Franklin discarded the empty shotgun, pulled the pistol and killed him as he ran by. By the time Franklin reached the exit, Wendell was more than halfway across the yard. Franklin fired off two shots. Wendell tripped but was immediately back up. Wendell turned and fired three shots back at Franklin without slowing down. The bullets didn’t come anywhere near Franklin. Franklin fired and then set off after Wendell.
Wendell ran back into their cellblock with Franklin close behind. As Franklin stopped at the door and peeked in, Wendell fired off a shot that barely missed.
“Damn, Wendell,” Franklin said as he pulled out a stun grenade. “You seriously suck with a gun.” He tossed the grenade. When it exploded, Franklin went on the offensive. Wendell was nowhere to be seen. He heard a vehicle outside leaving. Franklin burst through the doors just in time to see a truck speeding off with Wendell in the back. Wendell shot him the finger. Franklin raised his weapon and emptied the magazine. Then he dropped the magazine and slammed in another, but by the time he raised the gun, they were too far away. He fired off four shots, anyway.
CHAPTER 19
After a shower in the warden’s office, Franklin discovered where the prisoners’ personal effects were stored and searched through them until he found his old street clothes. Afterward, he returned to the unlocked armory. Now that he was clean, Franklin nearly wretched entering the cell block as the smell of decaying flesh, rotting vomit, and human waste assaulted his senses. It took him almost ten minutes before he could enter the central area housing the prisoners.
“I thought you left,” Ammiel said, looking relieved. “You promised to let me out if I helped you.”
“Me too,” the other prisoner said. Others remaining alive started yammering to be released.
“Simmer down,” Franklin shouted. “You’ve waited this long; a few more hours won’t kill you.” Fearing they would anger Franklin, the prisoners quickly quieted down. Franklin began a grisly search of each cell looking for survivors, writing their identification numbers. In most of the cells, it was obvious the prisoner was dead, but a few times, he had to probe with a mop.
“My name is Samuel Rodgers,” an inmate near Ammiel said as Franklin wrote his number. “You promised to let me out.”
“I promised to set Ammiel free. I didn’t promise you anything.”
“I didn’t tell those men where you were,” Samuel said in a pleading voice. “That has to count for something.”
“So, are you setting yourself up as judge, jury, and executioner?” Ammiel asked, his head leaning into the cell bars as he tried to make eye contact with Franklin.
Franklin didn’t reply. Instead, he headed for the armory and picked through the supplies, filling a black duffle bag with what he needed. As soon as he was through with the grisly task ahead, he was leaving.
“Are you just going to leave us here?” Samuel asked as Franklin started back for the warden’s office.
“I’ll be back in a little while,” Franklin said as he walked out the door.
Later, after examining Ammiel’s prison record, Franklin tossed the folder on the desk in disgust only to watch it glide across the surface and fly off the other side. Ammiel’s life was filled with drug abuse, drug dealing, gangs, and theft. He was also the suspect in at least two unsolved murders. Considering his lifestyle, there were likely more. In the previous world, you couldn’t convict someone on assumptions, but this was not that world. This was a reality where old rules no longer applied and maybe never would again. Sighing with regret, he walked around the desk, picked up the folder, and placed it on the smaller of the two piles sitting at the corner of his desk.
Of the prisoners, forty-four made it through the epidemic, and another five were touch and go. This didn’t include the pedophile in the protective custody wing or the two survivors on death row. They would never leave. Of the survivors, two were blind, and one was suffering from a case of amnesia. He didn’t know if either was temporary or permanent.
Two hours later, he made his decision with everyone except Ammiel. He sat at the desk and meticulously wrote the names of the prisoners, their identification numbers, and what they were incarcerated for. After he finished, he sifted through his supplies. Taking apart a gun belt, he pieced together another so it would hold two pistols, two expanding batons, and at least six magazines. When he could put it off no longer, he picked up a loaded shotgun, shouldered the bag and set off on his task as the grim reaper.
His first stop was the protective custody wing where the only man to survive was convicted of raping two young girls, neither older than eleven. The man begged for his life, swore he was innocent and that they’d convicted the wrong guy. Maybe it was true. DNA evidence exonerated convicted killers and rapists all the time. But he couldn’t take that chance. He shot the man without discussion. The shot rang through the prison. He dispatched the death row inmates next and then went to the cellblock where he used to be housed and finally returned to face Ammiel.
“How does it feel to be death?” Ammiel said when he entered. There was a look of disgust on his face.
Taking a chair from the guard shack, Franklin turned it around and sat looking at Ammiel, the pump shotgun casually held in both hands. He just looked at Ammiel for a few moments studying the man. Ammiel was built like a professional basketball player: tall and muscular. He appeared to be in his late twenties with short black hair and just enough beard stubble to indicate he was usually clean-shaven. Surprisingly, considering his gang affiliations, he wasn’t sporting many visible tattoos.
“What if I give you a gun, tell you what each has done?” Franklin finally said. “Let you decide their fate. Are you willing to make the hard choice? Or should I release murderers, rapists and whoever else is in here back into the world, or just let them starve to death?” Ammiel said nothing, yet continued to stare him in the eyes, almost, it seemed as if daring Franklin to kill him.
“So far today, I’ve killed fourteen people. Even with that many kills and including the three I was sent to prison for, I’m still not the worst person still alive.” Franklin turned to look at the man calling himself Samuel. “Am I Lloyd?”
“What are you talking about? My name is Samuel,” he said, suddenly sounding nervous and visibly breaking out in a sweat. His fingers twitched. Franklin walked over to face Lloyd. He double-checked the number on his clipboard with the number on the prisoner’s cell.
“I’m sorry, but your number corresponds with Lloyd Cole, a convicted serial killer. The only reason you’re not on death row is that you made a deal to show authorities where you dumped the bodies in exchange for life without the possibility of parole. They’re not even sure how many you killed. They’re estimating as many as thirty-five, but twenty-two are confirmed.”
“Man, I’m telling you, that’s not me,” Lloyd said, his voice getting higher with fear. “You. . .
you must have pulled someone else’s file.” He grabbed the bars and pressed his face and body against them. “My name is Samuel, Samuel Rogers. I’m in for aggravated assault and fleeing across state lines.”
“What about it, Ammiel?” Franklin said, turning to face the man. “Is his name, Samuel? If you tell me it is, I’ll set him free into a world without rules. If not . . .” He let the rest go unsaid.
“Tell him Ammiel,” the man said pleading, yet sounding hopeful. He pressed harder against the bars trying to see Ammiel, hoping eye contact would convince him to lie. “Tell him I’m Samuel. Please Ammiel, tell him who I am.”
Ammiel looked at Franklin in anger, and for several moments, he said nothing. Finally, he lowered his head and shook it. Franklin put the shotgun on the floor and pulled his pistol.
“Lloyd . . .” Franklin said. Lloyd began to weep, knowing he was about to die. “You want to pray or something?”
“I do. I do. I’m a God-fearing man, now,” Lloyd said, his face brightening. “I’ve changed my ways. Give me a chance to prove it.”
“Go ahead and say a prayer. We’ll chat afterward.”
Lloyd dropped to his knees and folded his hands at his chest, trying to think of an inspired prayer. Here was his chance. If he could persuade Franklin with an earnest and heartfelt prayer, convince him he’d found God, maybe the man would spare his life. For a few moments, nothing came to him. How could he convince the man he was changed if he didn’t even know what to say? He was about to go back to begging for his life when he was suddenly filled with inspiration. He would be a free man after he showered Franklin with these words. Afterward, he would have his way with the world. It was enough to make him smile harder.
“Dear Lord,” Lloyd said, his face and hands raised toward the heavens. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Hear my prayer—”